My East End

by Gilda O'Neill

  In those days you couldn’t afford a bike or anything, no transport, so you did your courting locally and married someone who lived close by. And because families lived near one another, not more than a matter of a few streets away, you’d get a mate going out with your sister and you might go out with his.

  The growth of bicycle ownership, enabling marriage to someone more than a street or two away, must have had as significant an impact on the gene pool of the poorer, labouring classes in the East End as any amount of immigration into the area.

  After the marriage, the next big do in many couples’ lives would be a christening. It was something you did, as much a social event as a religious sacrament.

  You’d lay on a good spread for everyone at a christening. The baby would have had its head wetted down the pub, when it had been born, and the mum would have been churched so she could go out again, then it was the christening. You wouldn’t want to be shown up by not putting on a good spread and plenty of ale.

  One family christening, my aunt insisted that my uncle had to return a little dog he had ‘found’, intending to sell it down Club Row the next morning. She wasn’t so much concerned about him pinching it as the fact that it belonged to the vicar, and that didn’t seem right.

  Funerals, although obviously sad affairs, were times when preparations as extensive as those for marriages and christenings were made, with food, drink and appropriate attire all contributing to the self-respecting family’s demonstration that they could give one of their members a proper and fitting send-off.

  The reception for a funeral [would be] held at the local pub, with plenty to drink and similar food for weddings. People would start off very sad and sombre, but they would cheer up and often end up singing. This would seem strange behaviour to some, but this was the way we did things, and it would be regarded as a ‘good send-off’. The deceased would lie in state in the front room of the house, where family members would come to pay their last respects. All the furniture in the house would be covered in white sheets to show respect. Everybody would wear black, which would include a black armband. These armbands were worn for several days. The coffin would be taken to the cemetery by horse-drawn carriage. This was always very slow and looked majestic.

  You’d draw the curtains out of respect and cover the mirror – no vanity at such a sad time, you see. In the old days, when the hearse was drawn by horses, they would put pads over their hoofs and throw down straw to muffle the sound of them stepping on the cobbles. The horses were beautiful creatures. They’ve made a comeback lately. A lot of people round here are having the horses again. It’s important to have a proper send-off. It was important even then, when no one had anything much to spare in their pocket, but you would make sure you had a policy to cover your funeral costs.

  Everyone in the street pulled down their blinds on the day of a funeral as a mark of respect and sawdust was thrown in the road to muffle the sound of the black horse’s hoofs that pulled the beautiful hearse with its elaborate glass sides. All the neighbours would stand in the doorways, dressed in their aprons, watching silently.

  If the person who had died had been one of the old boys who used a certain pub, the funeral procession would stop outside so the landlord and customers could show their respect. They’d come outside and take their hats off. The hearse would wait there a while before moving on.

  The East Enders were great ones for funerals: plumed horses and most artistic wreaths – the cushion, the empty chair, the broken heart. Everybody stood silently and took off their hats as they passed. [My friend and I] would go for a walk round Bow cemetery and read all the lovely things written on the tombstones. My little cousin was buried there. She was only five and had died of diphtheria. My uncle was heartbroken and on her grave he had put:

  She came, and it was light.

  Suddenly she went, and it was dark.

  We used to cry.

  At times of such sadness or of celebration it was accepted that gestures of sympathy or congratulations would be made by both the family and members of the local community.

  A regular and accepted generosity was the street collection for a funeral wreath or a wedding gift. In our house, as in most along the street, when someone died a few coppers was set aside for the collection.

  They were shared times. You’d want to show your respects, so you’d make sure you gave to the collection. We was all one in them days, you see. You might be crying, but you’d be doing it together.

  Displays of respect were seen to confer a decency on the arrangements and, regardless of your circumstances, you did the best you possibly could at such times.

  My nan never had much, but she paid her insurances regular. Had to have enough put by for a good send-off, and didn’t want to think she’d be a burden when she was gone.

  Being able to paying for your burial – a decent burial – was a matter of pride. You’d have a penny [insurance] policy so you wouldn’t have a funeral that would show you up.

  But with hard times and widespread poverty a decent burial was not always a possibility.

  Three of my playmates died of childhood diseases. The one who lived next door was buried in a common grave. Such was life, and death, in those days.

  And, sadly, memories of such deprivation in the East End of even recent living memory are not rare.

  [ 11 ]

  Grandad was gassed in the First World War and never recovered or worked regularly again. As a result the family was destitute throughout my dad’s childhood. Dad was the eldest and, despite passing the ‘scholarship’ to go to grammar school, he had to leave education at thirteen to bring in money as the supporter of his siblings and parents. He told me that, at one time, he and his brothers took it in turn to go to school, because they had only a single pair of boots between them. A frequent meal was boiled rice, with a spoon of jam if they were well off that day.

  When talking to people about poverty, it was sometimes difficult to believe that the stories I was recording were based on comparatively recent memories of life in the East End and not some Dickensian past.

  While today we complain if the washing machine breaks down, or if the central heating isn’t functioning quite as we’d like, or that maybe we can’t afford that flash holiday we saw on the telly, or that we are ‘starving’ because we haven’t had our mid-morning snack, older people recall tragedies and heartbreak which came from true hardship and hunger.

  I never had a childhood. By the age of eleven I was caring for two Jewish children every night after school. Once they were in bed I had to clean their parents’ shops. Every Friday, after their fish and chicken had been cooked, I was expected to dismantle the whole cooker to clean it. I never got home any night until eleven o’clock. I was paid half a crown a week; two shillings for my mum and sixpence for me. It was hard to tell Mum when there was no more cleaning work for me to do. They were bad old days. Hunger and hard work. We even ate starlings, and killed my own brother’s racing pigeons to put in a pie. All the furniture was paid for on the weekly. We’d lie on the floor to hide when the tallyman came round. There just wasn’t enough to live on.

  Stories such as this may sound, to modern, cynical ears, like well-worn variations of ‘hard times in the bad old days’, but when the human consequences are considered, they are far too affecting to be taken for mere cliché.

  Really, you’d have children who were neglected. Dressed in rags and with sores round their mouths. No shoes on their feet, four and five to a bed, and freezing-cold bedrooms with old coats chucked over them. Chilblains and little chapped hands. They wasn’t necessarily bad parents, they was probably doing what they could, but it wasn’t always enough. Being hungry, really hungry, is a terrible thing. Having a hungry child must be worse.

  My grandmother knew poverty. Her husband died young and she had five children, one born after his death, to raise. She took in washing and did scrubbing.

  I wouldn’t want anybody to have to put up with poverty like that. As ch
ildren in the 1920s and early 1930s we never knew how hard it was [for our parents]. All we knew was we never ever got enough to eat. Parents must have had a terrible struggle to try and feed their kids.

  There was never any spare money for presents and food at times like Christmas. My dad hung up his stocking hopefully and was excited to see it all lumpy and promising on Christmas Day. When he took it down, he found it was full of lumps of coal.

  Between the wars, during the slump, Grandfather couldn’t get work and was desperate, as they had nine children to care for. He went to Canada and worked on the new railroads being built there. It was so cold in the winter he nearly froze to death and had to be resuscitated.

  *

  Even among the very poor, there were those who were better off, those who were considered ‘fortunate’ to have even the meanest type of work.

  G. went blind as a young man – family rumour had it that Nana had tried a home-procured abortion. As was the way of the time, he was taught to play the accordion as a way of earning a living, and he and my mother would busk around the streets.

  Children might be genuinely fortunate in that their parents had some form of regular work and could live that little bit better than their friends, even if ‘that bit better’ would not mean very much in today’s terms.

  It was the summer holidays and I was raking the streets with a gang of kids from down our turning. We’d been playing over on the treacle barges at Long Wall [now part of the Three Mills Heritage site] when one of the boys found the end of a stale loaf that someone had chucked out for the street pigeons. He was from a right poor family and he dived on this bread like he was starving. He never kept it for himself, he ripped it up and passed it round. I didn’t want to look like a snob, so I ate my share of this rotten old bread, but I was torn between what me mother would do to me if she found out I’d eaten it and keeping face with my gang of mates.

  My mother did dressmaking, so we were thought of as well off. A joke really, as she only earned a pittance and my father was often out of work. He bought Mum a second-hand treadle machine and, as she did mainly bridal work, he often used the hand-machine while Mum was on the treadle to get an order out! He would do the hems and so on. Us kids often went to sleep with the sound of those machines in our ears. If mum was doing a large order for a wedding, she sometimes over-estimated on the material so my sister and I could have a frock. Naughty.

  *

  Perhaps it was ‘naughty’, but it was also her mother’s way of getting by, of seeing that her family did not go without. Others had their own methods of surviving and, demanding as those days were for so many, the memories are recalled not with shame but with dignity, because people somehow managed to get through it all.

  The Depression years were hard. Dad was out of work every other week [and there was] no unemployment money. We used to get coupons from the doctor to get a bowl of soup for us children. It was delivered to the local school and we used to take a basin down to collect our soup. Dad being the breadwinner had egg and bacon on a Sunday morning if there was the money, and us kids took turns to be given the bacon rind, which was a real treat. Once a week! We always seemed to have holes in our shoes, as there was no money to repair them or to buy new ones, so we’d stick a bit of cardboard in them to keep the weather out.

  Our mum used to take in washing and do a bit of cleaning. We got by in our own way. I was happy, though. But I was the baby of the family, remember. We was brought up the best [Mum and Dad] could manage. They did their best for us. All around us you could see people out of work but still proud and managing. Still getting by on a pittance. They were supposed to be the good old days. [Laughter]

  I’m one of nine children and times were very hard. My father was in ill-health, so Mother had a hard time bringing us up. We lived mostly through pawnshops. Any decent clothes we got off the tallymen. If they got their money that was another thing – ‘Mum says she’s not in,’ we’d say and pull the strings through the door so they couldn’t come in. But our clothes were mostly from rag shops and hand-me-downs. Everything was geared to getting money to feed you. I don’t know how my mother got through it.

  The roads used to be surfaced with tar-covered blocks – tarry blocks, we called them – and you’d go down with a barrow or an old pram and nick a few to burn on the fire. Full of stones, they were, and they’d spit out at you. You had to be careful if you sat too near, but they burned lovely. Gave out a lot of heat.

  Somehow our family managed to survive and, as I remember, we were never short of food, because my mother, whilst not very well educated, had an instinct for matters financial. She used to buy pawn tickets from friends and relatives anxious to obtain further cash on the article deposited with the order. These she [would] convert into cash by selling on the articles for a profit. She was also very adept at bargaining over prices.

  The memories of living in poverty were often recalled in a matter-of-fact sort of a way. As most of the neighbourhood would have shared your plight, neither they nor you would have seen anything unusual in your circumstances – not at the time, anyway.

  Having newspaper squares on a nail in the lav, with its wooden seat shiny from use, was the same in next-door’s backyard as yours, and the same in the next-door’s backyard to them.

  The school provided you with boots and they’d have a hole punched in the side as a mark so you couldn’t pawn them.

  If I got some money as a kid, it was always spent on something to eat. That was your main aim in life. I can’t say we was ever starving, but we could always do with a bit more. Poor Mum, I don’t know how she got through it. We went to school mainly in white slippers [plimsolls] with red rubber soles. I hated them. All the stitching used to come undone and the sole used to flop. If we did have shoes – from the tallyman – they were popped over at Uncle’s [pawned] and we used to have to put those slippers on. [To stop] Dad finding out, Mum would say, ‘Get behind the back of that table. Don’t let your father see you ain’t got your shoes on.’

  *

  Organizing things to be taken to the pawnshop, as a way of stretching the meagre family finances, was usually the woman’s responsibility, even if the task of ‘popping’ was delegated to the children and the actual cause of the shortfall in the budget could sometimes be found in the pub on the corner of the street.

  Quite often more money was spent on this [having a ‘half-pint’] than could be afforded, resulting in a shortage of money on Monday morning. How are we going to get through the week? The answer was frowned upon by some [but was] the saviour to many. It was the pawnshop they turned to on Monday morning. These establishments with their distinctive sign, the three brass balls, would take any worthwhile article, lend money on it for a short period at a small rate of interest, and if not redeemed by the time stated, it became his property. In my opinion they were giving a useful service and at the same time helping to cut out the back-street moneylenders, of which there were many. Most streets had the wealthy little old lady with several large sons who would advance money but at an exorbitant interest rate.

  Being poor did not have to mean that, as you stepped over the threshold of the pawnshop and set the bell above the door ringing to announce your arrival to ‘Uncle’, you had to leave your pride behind.

  Mum would always pay a little bit extra to have her pawnshop pledges wrapped in brown paper. This would keep the dust off, and kept your business private.

  [I used to go with my aunt] to the pawnshop on Monday mornings to pawn anything pawnable, including her wedding ring – which she used to replace with a brass one from Woolworths so [her husband] wouldn’t know.

  Others were not so bothered about trying to hide their poverty. Some even had photographs taken recording the circumstances of their deprivation.

  Sometimes the pawnshop sold off stock it had collected and [there was] a picture of my dad as a boy in dreadful, ill-fitting pawnshop clothes.

  People would say, ‘Where’s your wedding ring?’ and you’
d say, ‘Oh, that’s down the road this week. I needed a sack of coal.’

  My job, when I was old enough, [was] to take a penny which was laid on the sideboard and the parcels to the pawnshop. We weren’t old enough to put our own parcels up, we was under-age, but there was one particular lady, she was a bit queer to look at [but] she was there solely to put your parcels up, so they could go through. And she used to stop so much of the money from us for doing it. We couldn’t have anything to eat until I came back with that money.

  Business was obviously brisk in the pawnshops and a system of joining three pens together on a bar was used by the pawnbroker to produce the three tickets required for a transaction in a single go: one ticket to put on the item being pledged, one for ‘Uncle’s’ records and another for the customer.

  Even if you had nothing of your own to pawn, there were still ways of finding those few shillings until the end of the week.

  We used to borrow one another’s washing. You’d do a load of washing, dry it, iron it, make up a parcel and take it to the pawnshop. It might not be your clothes. It might have been the neighbour’s, [who would say,] ‘What washing you done for me, you can borrow to take to the pawnshop. Make sure you get it out for the weekend.’

  When my oldest sister was courting she brought a bit of glamour into the house. Well, he seemed posh to us. He used to buy her jewellery. She had a lovely watch and a dress ring. Mum used to say, ‘Can I borrow them for the week?’ [And my sister would say,] ‘Make sure I’ve got them back for the weekend so [he] don’t know they’re gone.’ Once, I had to go and get them out. I don’t know where Mum got the money from. On a Saturday it was, and getting near the time when B. was going to come. Jewellery was up the posh end and washing down the other. If you got half a crown on a bag of clothes you was lucky, but you could get a bit more on jewellery. Well, this watch, it was a lovely little thing, but when I got outside the shop I dropped it on the concrete pavement. I was so frightened, but luckily it was still going.